Terry Teachout Quotes

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord.

This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal.

I started composing when I was around 13, and back then, people used to say that I needed to be a composer or a performer, but I can't be good at both of them. I could never understand why anyone would say that. Jellyroll did both, Bessie Smith did both, and so did I.

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

Mozart had a tremendously fertile and creative ear for a catchy tune.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

Mozart is my first strength.

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

My harmony is passable but is usually made more eloquent at the hands of Steve Hamilton.

Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

I'm a musical genius.

Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk has been actively hostile to virtuosity.

Looking back on it now, I felt that I was blessed much like the masters, I guess - the guys who wrote the concertos.

I actually was a musician in college, a composer and singer, and really intended to be the second coming of Leonard Bernstein when I got out.

I love Mozart, but I often make a terrible hash of it.

When you're a kid, Beethoven is Beethoven, but as I've grown older, my astonishment at the sheer inventiveness of the man has increased, and I have an appreciation that I didn't have when I was in my 20s.

My mother was an opera singer and my father is a clarinet player, composer and conductor.

I've been making music since age five.

There's so many different ways to play Mozart.

I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.